Is AP Seminar hard?

The following passage is from "Corn-pone Opinions," an essay by the American writer Mark Twain, written in 1900 and first published in 1923, after his death. Corn pone is a plain cornbread.

Fifty years ago, when I was a boy of fifteen and helping to inhabit a Missourian village on the banks of the Mississippi, I had a friend whose society was very dear to me because I was forbidden by my mother to partake of it. He was a gay and impudent and satirical and delightful young black man – a slave – who daily preached sermons from the top of his master’s woodpile, with me for sole audience. . . .

One of his texts was this:

“You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what his ’pinions is.”

I can never forget it. It was deeply impressed upon me. By my mother. Not upon my memory, but elsewhere. She had slipped in upon me while I was absorbed and not watching. The black philosopher’s idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot afford views which might interfere with his bread and butter. If he would prosper, he must train with the majority; in matters of large moment, like politics and religion, he must think and feel with the bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing and in his business prosperities. He must restrict himself to corn-pone opinions – at least on the surface. He must get his opinions from other people; he must reason out none for himself; he must have no first-hand views.

I think Jerry was right, in the main, but I think he did not go far enough.

1. It was his idea that a man conforms to the majority view of his locality by calculation and intention.

This happens, but I think it is not the rule.

2. It was his idea that there is such a thing as a first-hand opinion; an original opinion; an opinion which is coldly reasoned out in a man’s head, by a searching analysis of the facts involved, with the heart unconsulted, and the jury room closed against outside influences. It may be that such an opinion has been born somewhere, at some time or other, but I suppose it got away before they could catch it and stuff it and put it in the museum. . . .

Broadly speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly speaking, corn-pone stands for self-approval. Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is conformity. Sometimes conformity has a sordid business interest – the bread-and-butter interest – but not in most cases, I think. I think that in the majority of cases it is unconscious and not calculated; that it is born of the human being’s natural yearning to stand well with his fellows and have their inspiring approval and praise – a yearning which is commonly so strong and so insistent that it cannot be effectually resisted, and must have its way.

The following is excerpted from a 2017 report by the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency that investigates transportation accidents, on a 2016 crash near Williston, Florida. A car driving with Tesla's Autopilot (a system that can steer and control speed but requires the driver to watch the road) struck a truck.

Based on system design, in an SAE-defined Level 2 automated vehicle, it is the driver’s responsibility to monitor the automation, maintain situation awareness of traffic conditions, understand the limitations of the automation, and be available to intervene and take over for the system at any time. In practice, however, human drivers have cognitive limitations that make fulfilling this responsibility difficult because people are poor at monitoring automation and do not perform well on tasks requiring passive vigilance (Parasuraman, Molloy, and Singh 1993; Parasuraman and Riley 1997; Moray and Inagaki 2000; and Parasuraman and Manzey 2010). Moreover, there is evidence that drivers lack a complete understanding of advanced automation systems, including their functionality and limitations (McDonald and others 2016).

Manufacturers try to make systems safer by encouraging driver engagement through the incorporation of design solutions that monitor driver behavior and issue warnings when engagement seems lacking. Several vehicle models with Level 2 automated systems use steering wheel torque to monitor driver engagement. However, driving is a highly visual task, so the driver’s touching the steering wheel may not accurately indicate that he or she is fully engaged with the driving task. Simply checking whether the driver has placed a hand on the steering wheel gives little indication of where the driver is focusing his or her attention. . . .

The time intervals permitted before an automated system issues an alert are a vital component of the monitoring system. Although the operational design of the Tesla Autopilot requires an attentive driver as an integral system element, the Autopilot on the Williston crash vehicle allowed the driver to operate in the automated control mode for almost 6 minutes, during which the system did not detect the driver’s hands on the steering wheel. In fact, of the 37 minutes in which the Tesla driver operated the vehicle in the automated control mode during the crash trip, the system detected his hands on the steering wheel for only 25 seconds. Investigators found no indication in recorded vehicle data that the Tesla driver attempted to take any action (by braking or steering) to prevent crashing into the semitrailer or that he was even aware of the impending crash. . . .

Based on the lack of response from the Tesla’s driver before the impact with the truck and data indicating extended periods of hands-off driving, the NTSB further concludes that the way that the Tesla Autopilot system monitored and responded to the driver’s interaction with the steering wheel was not an effective method of ensuring driver engagement. Therefore, the NTSB recommends that manufacturers of vehicles equipped with Level 2 vehicle automation systems develop applications to more effectively sense the driver’s level of engagement and alert the driver when engagement is lacking while automated vehicle control systems are in use.